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About Relationship Counselling

Relationships are an essential ingredient in anyone’s life. They can provide support, love, connection, pleasure, comfort, and friendship. At times they can also be a source of distress, disappointment and frustration and may significantly impact on a person’s well-being. Individuals in a relationship may be faced with issues they find overwhelming and unable to confront, ‘fix’ and cope with. If left unresolved, the result may lead to a relationship ending, impacting upon a person and their family life, heightening their risks of psychological, physical and emotional distress.

If a problem feels as if it cannot be resolved and is impacting negatively on the individuals involved in the relationship, it is important that the couple seeks professional assistance from a psychologist.

Unfortunately most couples don’t seek professional support until it is too late. Divorce prediction in the United States suggests that the average couple wait approximately six years before searching for support for relationship problems. With half of all marriages in the United States ending in the first seven years, the average couple live with unresolved problems for a significant period of time in their marriage.  In Australia, approximately 43 per cent of all marriages end in divorce and remarriage following divorce has the highest risk of ending in another divorce.

Causes of relationship problems

Couples may seek relationship counselling to improve their already healthy relationship by enhancing their fulfilment in areas such as intimacy and communication. Couples may also seek counselling for relationship problems, which can be caused by a number of issues, including:

  • Poor communications skills – including emotional reactive behaviour; stone walling where one individual shuts out another by not communicating; emotional detachment
  • Issues relating to house tasks and responsibilities – including cultural expectations; lack of role clarity
  • Differences in child rearing styles – including different personal experiences and beliefs
  • Poor work/ life balance for either or both partners
  • Relationship intimacy issues – including impotence; differences in libido levels; health issues
  • Lack of quality time between partners
  • Pressures caused by major life transitions – such as immigration; loss of loved one; work or career change; having a baby
  • Undefined, shifting or split loyalties between extended family and/or in-laws
  • Financial Issues – including addictions, such as gambling, alcohol and drugs
  • Extra marital affairs – including trust issues

What happens in relationship counselling?

Relationship counselling involves both partners working together with the psychologist to resolve problems that are affecting the quality of their relationship. Couples counselling provides partners with tools to assist them in increasing positivity in their relationship, building resilience and assisting in resolving differences.

Through the counselling process, psychological treatments may be used such as emotion-focussed therapy which focuses on addressing the emotional needs of both partners, as well as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and/or solution-focussed therapy, which are all evidence-based treatments aiming to change patterns of behaviour.

Psycho-Education is an important component where the psychologist can assist couples in enhancing the quality of their relationships through educating them about proven tools and strategies. Skill building and coaching also assists couples to improve their understanding and communication of individual differences as well as gain a greater level of commitment and fulfilment from the relationship. 

Sometimes relationships can no longer work for a variety of reasons and the psychologist may assist the individuals through an amicable separation, as well as supporting outcomes for the best interests of the children involved.

Click here to find out more about marriage counselling.

How Life Resolutions® can help

Life Resolutions® has a network of qualified psychologists who are experienced in relationship counselling. We can also provide individual counselling to address individual issues which may impact on the relationship, prior to beginning the couples counselling process.

Visit the contact us page to make an appointment.